Unless you live in San Diego or were a major league general manager trying to find third-base help at the nonwaiver trading deadline last July, chances are you might have missed Chase Headley’s outstanding season for the San Diego Padres.

Playing in the very pitcher-friendly expanses of Petco Park, Headley finished the 2012 season with 31 homers and 115 RBIs, both very good numbers. How many casual baseball fans would list Headley in the game’s top dozen players, though? Not nearly enough. Advanced metrics help reveal how outstanding his season really was. Headley finished sixth in the majors with a 7.5 WAR, an analytic designed to encompass all aspects of a player’s game.

Jason Heyward's baserunning ability is second to none, at least according to the Ultimate Base Running (UBR) metric. (AP Photo)

A few other advanced metrics that help us view players who might not be getting enough attention.

Isolated Power (ISO): Essentially, this measures a hitter’s raw power by isolating his extra-base hits. The easiest way to do this is to subtract batting average from slugging percentage. Edwin Encarnacion of the Toronto Blue Jays finished second in the majors with a .277 ISO, behind only Josh Hamilton (.292).

Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+): This ballpark-adjusted and league-adjusted stat melds all the standard offensive numbers (homers, doubles, strikeouts, stolen bases, etc.) into one number and compares it to the league average (set at 100). The Minnesota Twins’ Josh Willingham was 10th in the majors with a wRC+ of 143, which means he created 43 percent more runs than the league-average player.

Ultimate Base Running (UBR): The goal is to place a value on how runners perform on the basepaths—not only their ability to take an extra base, but also their ability not to get thrown out after they reach base safely. Angel Pagan became a star for the World Series-winning San Francisco Giants largely because of how well he fit into the lineup as a leadoff batter and center fielder, but he is outstanding on the basepaths, too. His UBR of 5.9 was second in the majors, behind only the Atlanta Braves’ Jason Heyward—one spot ahead of the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout.